Contemplating the Engine

What does a prison planet look like? Does a culture that has a prison planet pick a planet bereft of resources? What if the Prison Planet is old--centuries old? Does it become a viable culture and government (hello Australia!)?

What kind of prisoners does this culture send there? What kind of crime is so subversive that you must abandon the people that commit them? Rape? Murder? Sexual Offenses? If so, what level of offense? What if the government could legally, and culturally acceptably, get rid of their political opponents, would they do so?

How does the culture get their prisoners there? Prison planets could only exist in a culture that has very inexpensive space travel. Does that mean that there are aliens there? How does the alien government feel about this culture banishing their citizens?

The cliche of Prison Planet seems to be the Mad Max landscape--post-apocalyptic--but Prison Planet isn't post-anything, it's pre-something. Also, it seems to me that it wouldn't resemble prison movies or shows that we have seen--the engine of those being the following recipe: 1. Take violent and unpredictable men, 2. Put them in an incredibly confined space.

But on the Prison Planet, can't the prisoners spread out anywhere they want to? If so, would they start trade networks? What kind of commerce would arise?

If a group of prisoners--let's say women--controlled a resource, could they take control of the planet? What would a prisoner-run matriarchy look like?

These are the kinds of questions running around my head, when I think of Prison Planet. I want to know what the engine is before I can see characters existing on it, not to mention that the engine might dictate the plot itself. Grand struggle, or personal struggle? Well, always the latter--of course--but in the context of what?